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The wall of fire opened its arms to allow Kira entry.

They would reseal the moment his threshold was crossed, locking her in with the Don and all his loyalists. She hadn’t needed seen the same scene play out throughout a thousand films to know it was a trap – it was written in the shared language of theatre binding all people, that illusionary play repeated around ancestors’ cookfires night after night until subconscious feel for the ebb and flow of drama became entwined with genetic material.

He’d also said as much at Arata’s apartment. The Don of Dragons wanted her dead: letting her go would be antithetical to his words.

Her co-conspirators, as well. Allie stared with watery eyes from beneath the Lieutenant’s boot. Someone had gagged her with what looked like a twisted black garbage bag. The pajamas she wore were matted with ash, zip ties around her limbs. She looked like she’d been dragged from bed out onto the road, after which her home had been set ablaze. Flames roared from the broken windows like eye sockets in a hollowed-out skull.

Somewhere else, her wounded family were likely midst a similar fate.

But Kira wasn’t dead yet. That was a good start to see some changes to the current situation.

Against thoughts of wielding it like a bat she threw her stolen weapon aside, smiling when the Lieutenant hissed as the metal scraped the concrete, bounced, and produced a sharp crack. She sucked in a breath that was, at most, only half breathable air, and stepped over the fuzzy black line scorched onto the road. Fire reclaimed its place after, cutting her off from any chance of escape in any state less than well-done.

“Miss Ishikawa,” the Don started, teeth parting to reveal white molars, greasy in the flickering light, “A pleasure it is to see you on this fine night. I hoped you’d come.” More than one of his men trained their weapon on her.

“Is that so?”

He nodded. “If only Mr. Ogata had accompanied you, but that can be remedied in due time. He found my means to track you, I take it? I knew not when you’d arrived, else I would have sent my Lieutenant to greet you.” A look passed between the two through his fluttering hands. Even as he spoke, his conducting over the wildfire’s progression remained uninterrupted, attention divided between magic and conversation.

Kira noted that down. Few precious meters lay between his guards and the flames needing to be continuously kept at bay.

Think of the future, she told herself. Think of the future and what it holds.

“He thought it was clever,” she lied. Appealing to the man could buy time. “Seeing as I’m not dead like you said I’d be, does that mean we can work out another agreement?”

The men laughed deep and raspy around Kira: a pack of slow-motion hyenas finding joy in the audacity. She took a cautious step forward.

“I think not,” was the Don’s response.

Movement surged from the Lieutenant. Muscular arms bent Kira at the waist, stole her arms in callused grip, and twisted them behind her.

The woman hadn’t moved an inch, simply scratched at her calf with the flanged edge of her master key while her clone did the work. Iridescent dust drifted from the weapon’s end, already loaded for use.

Kira hadn’t missed what the casual action intended to cover – the woman’s chest had hitched at the moment her clone made contact with Kira’s person. The most minute squib of fear had traveled along some arcane link between the manifestation and its master, like shocking a metal puppet whose steel wires were looped around its puppeteer’s vulnerable nerve-filled fingers.

“Come on, man, that was a fluke last time!” Kira said, forcing a laugh to hide her hammering heart. “I don’t even want anything major for my help. Hell, you could trade what I want right now.” She winced as the clone pulled on her arms. Her shoulder rotated dangerously in its socket, threatening to pop. “Your necklace! I just want your necklace!”

The Lieutenant was on Kira in a heartbeat, clone switching up its grip to yank Kira’s head back to face the woman towered over her.

Jammed in one hand, Kira’s stick-thin wrists pinched together between the strong fingers and knobby wrist bones. She gasped onto the woman’s face inches away, carcinogen scent scratching her nostrils with wire brushes.

“For what purpose does Arata need diamond and amber?” Questions burned behind her eyes, and her gaze bore into Kira’s own as though answers would rise from the depths of her pupils on blue plastic pyramids. It might have worked had she shaken the thief. “What purpose does that ritual serve?”

“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, right? I’ve always wanted a big one to show off.”

Her eyes darted down, measuring the distance to the Lieutenant’s shins.

It would never work. Steel threads threaded the clone’s muscles, grip keeping her in place that of a statue’s. Kicking would only succeed in ensuring she looked desperate.

Besides, the weight was off Allie’s back now. Progress had been made. Restraints still kept her on the ground, but the vulpine girl was free to roll onto her side. Hot concrete had reddened her fleshy arms. Singed her tail. Kira thought she could see the start of blisters, anger rising in response to her friend’s state. Calm yourself, Kira. Anger won’t save you here.

Fear would work, but among the burning homes, surrounded by foes, and the certainty granted by her vision of her future, fear refused to surface. Not even anxiety would heed the call to arms. Only this irritating sense of confidence rested within easy reach – a worse sort of malaise than any she’d felt previous.

The Don and the Lieutenant were talking now, the woman’s back to Kira. Her heart leapt as the woman took a step away, probably arguing her point on whatever matter their discussion surrounded.

But her legs were free. Her fingers, too. If she struggled, then the clone might tighten its grip just enough.

Pain would be her savior, but it would need to be more than a scratch. More than a bruise or mild discomfort. Her underused jaw ached for use.

“Hey, Lieutenant.”

The woman whirled around, eyes going straight to Kira’s open mouth. A chunk of pink lay clenched between her teeth.

Easier to eat herself, Kira found, than eating real food. This meat went down smooth.

Lights exploded in her eyes. Her mouth gushed with liquid copper and leaked crimson at the corners of her mouth. Fighting down the urge to spit as her cheeks swelled, she glared knives up at the Lieutenant while the woman’s face twitched – responding to the new stimuli – but only slightly.

“Not gonna happen, kid. I remember how that magic of yours works.”

Kira remembered something else, a detail the Lieutenant admitted she had no knowledge of: the image of a man at the center of his crowd, and smiles spreading across thousands of faces uncontrollable as a virus, like wildfire. Inborn magic gifted by the man she’d called father.

The clone undeniably connected to her would be no different than a hand several sets down that unbroken link.

The Lieutenant’s eye twitched, followed by her mouth tugging through her cheek.

She stumbled, legs going out from under her for a brief moment.

“Boss…” she moaned. Blood leeched from her face to render the woman pale as a ghost.

The picture of his power filled all available spaces, projected onto every surface. Kira let it revolve in the cores of stars pain had formed behind her eyes. She swallowed down a mouthful of her own blood, letting the warmth fill her ravenous belly long-satiated solely by sigildry. They were her own calories recycled, but the swell in her stomach strengthened the image of the happy man at ease in his ample skin, magic sharing his joy with the crowd of lovers.

Screams echoed through the night – the Lieutenant’s screams.

Pressure fell away from Kira’s wrists as the clone’s form gave way to entropy and distraction, its master crumpled to the ground. Freed, Kira planted a foot on the woman’s waist, found the hook holding her master key and released the terrifying weapon that had stolen her ear. She brushed the activating sigildry script as she’d seen the woman do in the clothing store to release the shining red blade, and she held the weapon aloft like a torch.

With the Don dead in her sights, she leapt off into a mad sprint. He and his waving hands were the sole target. If any guards put themselves in her path she would cut them down.

None dared to intervene.

She drew back the blade when close enough. It would cut him straight through and cauterize that bisecting slash. It would cut past the quick to the DNA. She swung mightily, throwing so much back into the attack that she was brought to her knees at his feet during the follow through, scream empowered by righteous rage cutting through the night sharp as her shimmering blade.

Crouched there on the hot ground, Kira heaved a quaking laugh.

So did the Don.

Her head snapped up. The man had pressed a hand to his mouth to stifle the laughter. His other palm faced outward, as if the Don were pushing aside a door. Slowly but surely, his men joined in the mirth. Kira blinked dumbly at the crime head still in one piece.

A red rope bright as a star arced parabolically around the Don’s body.

The master key’s blade had deformed at the moment before impact, curving from a straight edge into a sickle of comic proportions, shining red tip behind him.

“Oh, Miss Ishikawa,” he chuckled. “A master key’s chemical flame is still flame.”

Footsteps rushed to Kira in her daze. Someone slammed a bag over her head, cutting off her sight before they twisted it tight. Fabric pressed into her mouth and cut off air. She couldn’t breathe. Blood from her ruined tongue soaked the fabric and made her choke. She dropped the master key as someone slammed her to the ground from behind. Stars of a different, white sort bloomed as her head hit concrete.

She swung out with her hands. In the dark she struck flesh and leather and fabric but no foe screamed or let her go. Clenching what felt like a shoe, she tried to project her terror to no effect. Her hand was kicked away.

Someone bent down to her ear, and from the brutal voice she knew it was the Don.

“Know your enemy, know yourself, and you need not fear a hundred battles,” he hissed. “I win. Bag the mongrel and help my Lieutenant to her feet. We’ve work to see through before the night is out.”

Unconsciousness set in before the next blow landed.